Messages

251

Non-Windows Software / Re: Android: (Wired) File Transfers from PC

« on: June 12, 2014, 09:26 PM »

Wired transfers are a real PITA with most of the newer Android phones because Google does not want users to be able to access the file system from outside Android.  Wireless transfers are much easier because there are many Android file managers that allow you to browse a Windows network and transfer files in either direction.

Most of the time, I use the X-plore File Manager to transfer files to my Android devices.  

If I want to move a lot of files in or out, or back things up, I will load an ftp server on the Android device -  there are a number of them, but the one I've settled on is built into File Expert, another file manager.  Then I can access the ftp server from a PC and transfer files -- I usually use Beyond Compare for this.

252

Living Room / Call to arms on net neutrailty

« on: June 05, 2014, 02:13 PM »

So many people tried to post comments on the FCC Web site after watching John Oliver's very funny rant on net neutrality a few days ago that the site crashed.

There have been some complaints from the usual suspects that Oliver doesn't understand net neutrality, but IMHO, he has done all of us a great favor by bringing the debate to the masses in a way that the masses can actually understand.

253

Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« on: May 30, 2014, 08:54 PM »

In response to Secretary of State John Kerry's statement that Snowden is a traitor and a coward because he won't come back to the U.S. to face a fair trial, like Daniel Ellsberg did with the Pentagon papers, Daniel Ellsberg commented today that:

Edward Snowden is the greatest patriot whistleblower of our time, and he knows what I learned more than four decades ago: until the Espionage Act gets reformed, he can never come home safe and receive justice

254

Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« on: May 28, 2014, 04:56 PM »

NBC News is supposed to air their interview with Snowden tonight.  In the meantime, the network has posted an excerpt in which he states that he was not a low level technician, but was in fact trained as a spy and did undercover work for the CIA and NSA.

255

General Software Discussion / Nice guide to using a RAM disk

« on: May 27, 2014, 12:15 PM »

TechARP has posted the RAM Disk Guide Rev. 2.0, a useful guide to when and how to use a ram disk under Windows.

256

Living Room / Re: Our experiences with LED light bulb replacements

« on: May 21, 2014, 09:17 AM »

The Philips "lollipop" (as 40Hz dubbed it) design is supposed to provide an internal channel to circulate heat away from the base, allowing for a smaller heat sink, and thus a lighter and cheaper bulb.

257

Living Room / Re: Hey Mouser... you still drowning in student loan debt?

« on: May 20, 2014, 09:15 AM »

Here's some current statistical information from Pew Research about student debt and its socio-economic effects.

Read it and weep.

258

Living Room / Re: How long do hard drives actually live for?

« on: May 20, 2014, 06:46 AM »

Backblaze has a new report that shows absolutely no correlation between drive temperature and failure, based on  data they collected from 34,000 hard drives.

In other words, keeping drives cool does nothing to keep them running longer.

259

Living Room / Re: Our experiences with LED light bulb replacements

« on: May 17, 2014, 09:25 PM »

I have replaced most of the light bulbs in my house with LEDs.  I had been using CFLs whenever possible, but have now gotten rid of nearly all of them because I MUCH prefer the light quality of LEDs. 

LED Prices have come down dramatically in the past year, helped in my area (Massachusetts) by subsidies and rebates from the electric companies: For example, the Philips flat 60W equivalent bulbs Cranioscopical paid $12 for sell for $4.99 at my local Home Depot, as do the Cree 60W bulbs.  Philips A21 100W equivalent bulbs are selling there for $14.99.

3000K is the best color temperature for most LED lighting, IMHO, but it is hard to find in most sizes, 5000K is awful, except for a few situations like workbench lighting.  2700K is the standard for "warm white" incandescents and is fine for most indoor lighting and good for reading.  Most current LED bulbs have a color rendering index (CRI) in the mid 80's, but I have recently found some Feit PAR-20 LED bulbs with a CRI of 93, and the difference in quality is dramatic when they are used to replace LED or halogen bulbs that produce the same nominal light as measured in lumens.  I expect to seem more high CRI bulbs becoming available.

In general, I have found Feit bulbs to be the most reliable and to have the best dimming performance, but I have only seen them in a few sizes, and none above a 75W equivalent.  The Philips A21 75W and 100W equivalents give good light at full setting, but tend to shut themselves down when dimmed.  The 60W flat Philips are very good and I hope that design will find its way into brighter bulbs. I have generally found Cree bulbs to be inconsistent in light output and very poorly constructed.

260

Living Room / Re: Need a free survey site

« on: May 13, 2014, 04:54 PM »

SurveyGizmo and Qualtrics are the preferred tools for web surveys among many research professionals.  I've never used either myself.

SurveyGizmo has a free plan which is limited to 50 responses per month. I don't know if it has any limits on questions. They have a single user plan for $15/month and also offer a 14 day free trial.

One complaint about Qualtrics among researchers is that it is expensive,  but many university systems have licenses that allow people there to use the program for free, so you might check on that.

261

General Software Discussion / Re: 4 (Maybe more) Absolute top go-to programs

« on: May 10, 2014, 06:56 PM »

Anyway, I've never found a good client option.  I hate Outlook.  i don't much like thunderbird. What else is there?  the other options seem to either be really old and unsupported or too new and overly simple.

-superboyac (May 10, 2014, 03:01 PM)

I personally use SeaMonkey for email. It's sort of like Thunderbird for grown-ups. Being based on the Mozilla code, it is kept up to date with Thunderbird (and Firefox), but the email UI is much simpler and more palatable to me.

262

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Atom - A new editor is born

« on: May 09, 2014, 01:37 PM »

What I want in an editor:
------
Rectangular/column/block edit mode
Bookmark lines with a regex search and manipulate bookmarks (invert, blank lines, etc.)
Perform actions on bookmarked lines (copy, delete, move, etc)
Automatic incremental block fill (select block and fill/insert with 001, 002, 003, etc.)

-Edvard (May 06, 2014, 07:32 PM)

Kedit does all that, and then some, which is why I still use it more than any other editor, even though it hasn't been under active development for years.   The author has made some changes to keep it working under Win7 and Win8, but in doing so, he unfortunately changed it to use the registry for settings instead of the .ini file previously used.  A major mistake, IMHO!

Windows only, but known to run with WINE. Also, expensive.  Line oriented, so search targets cannot cross line endings.  If you are comfortable with REXX, you can make it do almost anything.

263

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: ADATA S102 64 GB USB 3.0 $5 promo ends May 1

« on: May 02, 2014, 10:32 PM »

PNY Turbo High Performance USB 3.0 Pen Drive (P-FD128TBOP-GE) seems to be the $/GB leader by a whisker: $48.95 for 128 GB at Amazon.com.

264

General Software Discussion / Re: How to repair zip files?

« on: April 25, 2014, 10:13 AM »

WinRAR can create RAR files with an internal recovery record that slightly increases the archive size, but lets you to recover the contents of damaged RAR archives when the corrupted or missing segment is no larger than the size of the recovery record.

However, according to the WinRAR help file, "ZIP archive format does not support the recovery record."

265

General Software Discussion / Re: Microsoft: All your data are belong to us.

« on: April 25, 2014, 09:59 AM »

Here's a new revelation about how Microsoft treats users' data: It seems that Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs without notification and without changing the file modification time stamp.

Just what is going on is not clear, and might be completely harmless, but it certainly reinforces concerns about privacy in the Microsoft cloud.

266

Living Room / Re: Once again, magically expensive items are only different in your mind

« on: April 23, 2014, 03:15 PM »

If an audiophile truly wants "as it was intended in the studio" sound, all they need to do is cruise eBay for some Yamaha NS-10s which were the most common studio near-field monitors for years.  That is, the speakers the engineers and producers listened to when doing recording, mixing and mastering.

-Edvard (April 22, 2014, 06:57 PM)

That's not really true.  Yamaha NS-10 speakers have a harsh sound that tends to exaggerate sound defects.  That makes them useful for monitoring certain types of recordings because you're more likely to spot problems before committing them to the can.  But it's not necessarily what you want to listen to at home, particularly if you like classical and acoustic music.  They are also reasonably portable.

Bowers & Wilkins 800 series speakers have been the monitors of choice for many major recording studios (e.g., Abbey Road) for decades, because of their unmatched faithfulness and transparency.  Unfortunately, a matched pair of 802 studio monitors will cost you at least $25,000 and is not really suitable for a living room not capable of fitting a symphony orchestra, nor an amp rated at less than 400 w/channel.

267

Living Room / Re: Once again, magically expensive items are only different in your mind

« on: April 23, 2014, 02:10 PM »

But most of us save audio files in digital format. Some use FLAC, I prefer wav as do all of the engineers I work with. There is a reason programs like ExactAudioCopy use wav as the default copying format.

-Joe Hone (April 22, 2014, 08:42 AM)

For working with digital audio, you definitely want to work with wav. For long term storage of anything except original recording masters, I consider flac the better choice.

flac is a lossless compression format that allows you to use musical contents without decompressing the entire file. Unlike MP3., AAC, etc., the source material is not changed, but if you work with it directly, there can be artifacts introduced by the interaction of codecs and sound processing software. However, if your conversion software does its job correctly, you should be able to convert a flac file back to wav format and the results should bit compare to the original.

If I were doing sound engineering today, I'd probably keep multiple copies of original masters in the original (wav) format simply to avoid any potential problems, but I would compress at least one archival copy using software with some kind of parity recovery to guard against corruption. flac does not have any recovery capability, but for anything that is not going to be used as a master for further processing, it works just fine and saves a lot of storage.

268

Living Room / Re: web hosts

« on: April 22, 2014, 11:27 AM »

Have used FutureQuest for 12 years and they have been rock solid.

269

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: 010 Editor (hex editor) discounted today at bitsdujour.com

« on: April 22, 2014, 09:36 AM »

Once again, 010 editor is at BDJ today for $49.95 (Commercial)/$19.95(Home/Academic).

Version 5, introduced last year, has many new features, including syntax highlighting, column mode and customizable toolbars and menus, that make it more competitive with regular text editors, while retaining its unique binary editing capabilities.

It is also now available for Linux.

270

Living Room / Re: Once again, magically expensive items are only different in your mind

« on: April 20, 2014, 05:47 PM »

There have been several solid scientific studies starting back in the 50s that attempted to analyze why a Stradivarius violin sounded so good. (FWIW I much prefer the darker sound of a Ceruti violin to the sweeter quality of the Stradivarius.) Those studies and experiments led to some interesting outcomes.

To my mind, the most profound was the ground-breaking work of luthier Carleen Hutchins that resulted in a modern family of violins usually referred to as the Violin Octet.. More on Carleen and the Hutchins Consort can be found here and here.

Which just goes to show that, when it comes to violins, the arguments that "old is better" and "there's nothing new to be had" are simply not true.

-40hz (April 20, 2014, 02:53 PM)

A close relative is a respected violin maker and restorer, and also teaches violin making.  He has always told me that, except for cheap mass produced violins (and violas, cellos and basses), each instrument is different. Quality does not depend on the age of the instrument, but rather on the skill of the maker and, for older instruments, of the craftsmen who worked on them over the years.

He also explains that violin makers adapt the instruments they work on to the tastes of the musicians who own them, which leads instruments to change over time.  He likes to say that very little in any 300 year old instrument actually remains from the original builder. But old violins that are still in use tend to be among the best, because those were the only ones worth the high cost of maintenance and repair over many decades.

The value of older violins built by Stradivari and other well known makers has more to do with their rarity and the desires of collectors than anything else.  Good modern violins cost less because they are not collectors items, but they are not cheap either. Young musicians often have to take out large loans or mortgages to acquire an instrument good enough to qualify them to play in a major orchestra or chamber group.

271

Living Room / Re: WinXP is officially dead!

« on: April 11, 2014, 03:31 PM »

And one way to accomplish that is to take away the ability to load your own software. Or posess your own copies. Both goals can readily be accomplished by simply taking hard media (like DVDs) out of the equation.

Adobe has already done that with their family of products. Microsoft is well on it's way to doing that for their entire ecosystem. And where the big devs go, the smaller will of necessity follow.

-40hz (April 10, 2014, 05:57 AM)

WRT Adobe, that is only true for professional products like Photoshop, Indesign, etc... The people who use those depend on them for their livelihood, are not about to switch platforms unless they absolutely have to, and are mostly happy to pay big bucks for their software to be always up-to-date as a cost of doing business.  Consumer products, and even professional products which face credible competition in the marketplace (eg., Photoshop Lightroom), follow the old paradigm and most likely will continue to do so. Some products remain free while attempting to entice users into paid additions and upgrades (Eg, Adobe Reader).

Outside of their Enterprise level software, Microsoft doesn't really have separate product lines for professional users and consumers, just different option levels of what is basically the same product.  I'd guess they may split Windows and Office into substantially different standard and premium lines, with the latter requiring a subscription.  They have already taken steps toward that by making Windows 8.1 free for devices with screens under 9" and including Office 2013 H&S for free with some Windows 8.1 non-professional editions, while requiring an Office 365 subscription for professional users.  In other words, I expect them to require subscriptions where folks really have to use the product, and make it free or cheap where it's an optional purchase.

So if you have an option to switch, that leaves you in the driver's seat, but if you depend on either of these companies software (or Apple's or Google's, for that matter) to stay in business, they will insert a siphon into your wallet.

272

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: today's giveaway challenges Revo Uninstaller Pro

« on: April 09, 2014, 02:10 PM »

Soft Organizer was previously known as Full Uninstall.

ChemTable makes an excellent registry editor called Reg Organizer ($39.95 for 2 computers) which includes much of the basic uninstall capability of Soft Organizer, without the program management features like update checking.

273

Living Room / Re: Once again, magically expensive items are only different in your mind

« on: April 08, 2014, 04:15 PM »

Slashdot reports a study which shows that even elite  musicians can't tell the difference between what-are-believed-to-be legendary hyper-expensive instruments and modern instruments:

-mouser (April 07, 2014, 06:22 PM)

That's nonsense. 

The only thing this study shows is that a certain sample of violinists liked some modern instruments better than some older ones.  It doesn't mean they can't tell the difference, or that new instruments are better or the same as old ones, or vice versa. Nor does it mean that every study along these lines would show the same thing.

Before jumping to conclusions, it should be noted that the person responsible for the experiment, and the publicity surrounding it, happens to be a violin maker who stands to profit from the notion that his instruments may be just as good as any made by Stradivarius or Guarneri del Gesu.

274

Living Room / Re: WinXP is officially dead!

« on: April 08, 2014, 03:11 PM »

Microsoft has basically adopted the ransomware model widely used by criminal hacking groups and increasingly popular with some allegedly legitimate cloud storage firms.

Microsoft will continue to provide support for governments and large institutions willing to pay huge sums to keep large numbers of XP systems safe for the next few years. 

So Microsoft will continue to write the necessary patches and provide them to those who can afford to pay their extortion, but it will not provide them to the rest of us, even though it would cost them next to nothing to make them available for download by everyone.

That doing so endangers everyone on the Internet matters not one whit to them.

275

Living Room / Re: Best Investigative Journalism magazines or webistes?

« on: April 02, 2014, 08:29 AM »

Here are some sites with a U.S. focus I'd recommend:

For general in depth investigative journalism, ProPublica. Note, in particular, their "Tools & Data" tab, which gives visitors access to the actual data collected in many of their investigations to play with and draw your own conclusions.

For public opinion, polls and statistical analysis, the Pew Research Center.

For investigative reporting on the media and journalism, the Columbia Journalism Review.

For unbiased information about U.S. health care issues, the Kaiser Family Foundation site.